In this year’s overstuffed blockbuster Avengers: Age Of Ultron, in addition to the whiz-bang special effects and signature Joss Whedon witty repartee, audiences were treated to some scenes that prompted that always-exciting crowd reaction of, “Huh?” In particular, Thor’s bird bath threw people off, although it seems the initial story would’ve resulted in even more confusion. See, it was originally the plan to have Loki pop up in Thor’s Scarlet Witch-induced dream sequence, alongside Idris Elba’s Heimdall. But, in a new interview with Digital Spy, Tom Hiddleston says people were baffled by the idea that Loki would be in the movie and not be the main bad guy, so his cameo got the axe.
I was part of the dream sequence for the character of Thor, and I shot for a day, enjoyed it very much. Then I received a phone call from Kevin Feige, actually Joss emailed me, basically Kevin said… in test screenings, audiences had overemphasized Loki’s role, so they thought that because I was in it, I was controlling Ultron, and it was actually imbalancing people’s expectations. So Joss and Kevin were like, “Let’s cut it, because it’s confusing people.”
We’d be curious to see just what kind of dream sequence featuring a brief Loki cameo led people to assume he was behind an entire series of events that had otherwise shown no connection to him or Asgard whatsoever. Then again, it’s understandable—when Tom Hiddleston pops up in a movie, we want him to be onscreen for the rest of the film, too. We can’t wait for the inevitable day when it turns out Loki has been controlling all the events in the Fast And Furious films. Why else would Dominic Toretto keep stressing “family”?